CHAPTER X 

 OF SWEET SCENTS 



" Scents are the souls of flowers : they may be even 

 perceptible in the land of shadows. The tulip is a flower 

 without a soul, but the rose and the lily seem to have one." 

 JOUBERT. 



" If odours may worke satisfaction, they are so soveraigne 

 in plants and so comfortable that no confection of the 

 apothecaries can equall their excellent Vertue." John 

 Gerard, The Herball, 1597. 



" Smells and other odours are sweeter in the Air at some 

 distance. For we see that in Sounds likewise they are sweetest 

 when we cannot hear every part by itself. . . For all sweet 

 smells have joined with them some earthly or crude odours 

 and at some distance the sweet which is the more spiritual 

 is perceived and the earthy reaches not so far." Bacon, 

 Sylva Sylvarum. 



THE Malmesbury Chronicle tells us that when Hugh the 

 Great, the father of Hugh Capet, asked in marriage the sister 

 of King Athelstan of England, he sent her gifts of perfumes 

 the like of which had never before been seen in England . We 

 have always lacked the skill of the professional perfumers of 

 the Continent, but when English women were wise enough 

 to make their own perfumes, sweet waters, washing-balls, 

 pomanders, and sweet linen bags from their herb gardens, 

 they were unrivalled. We know that at least as early as 

 the twelfth century the French perfume-makers were of 

 sufficient importance to be granted a charter, but there was 

 no such trade in England for centuries later, and even in 

 Chaucer's day it was only possible to buy perfumes from 

 the mercers. From crusading days the far-famed perfumes 

 of the East were valued gifts amongst the nobility of the 

 Continent, but in England they never found so much favour ; 



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